The Moulamein of the North

Alas, today we leave Mullaway.  A lovely spot and I could quite see myself living happily there.  Noting the weather of the first 4 days, I don’t think I could be accused of having any rose-coloured glasses (although perhaps the summer humidity might be an issue?).

After a stroll round the headland we piled into the car and headed off at pretty close to our target time of 10:30.  We rolled gently up the Pacific Highway (going over the Dirty Creek Range ascending to the dizzy heights of 110m AMSL: surprisingly neither of us got altitude sickness – this must be a residual training effect from our trip to Cusco)!

The first town we got to was Grafton.  This looked far less up-market than Coffs Harbour or Woolgoolga.  Then I realised we were in South Grafton and I wondered whether calling anything ‘South’ gave it an inferiority complex leading to social deprivation and low self-esteem?  Frances offered South Bruce as a counter argument and I realised that South Canberra is generally not too bad (at least compared to Gungahlin or Tuggeranong).  Whatever, the tone of Grafton lifted somewhat once over the Clarence. 

I got some fuel (just over 30mpg) at the Shell servo – bad idea as the Woolies one had E10 3c/l cheaper – and then Frances did some shopping for essentials such as potato chips and licorice.

We rolled out of town noting a parked truck painted as being owned by “Craig Pigg – livestock carrier”.  From Grafton it was 100km along the Summerland Way to the next real town, Kyogle.  This was a great drive through nicely vegetated country (even where cleared a fair bit of timber was left, presumably as shade trees for the stock).  The birding excitement of the day occurred along here with a pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles soaring over a clearing. 

Less exciting, but IMHO still interesting was the number of Cattle Egrets accompanying every bunch of – wait for it – cattle.   

We agreed it was a good job they weren’t oxen or we might have had the first Australian sighting of Oxpeckers!

After Kyogle, where we just missed the Saturday market, but had to follow some dweet on a tractor through town at 30kph, we swung on to the Murwillumbah/Nimbin road. 

Blast from the past parenthesis.  The last time I drove along here – possibly in 1988 – the start of the road was accompanied by a wrecked car, with a sign saying “This is the 75^th car to roll on this road since …”.   As on that occasion darkness was falling and I had driven a fair bit already I wondered what was coming.  Corrugated dirt, with many unsigned sharp corners and steep hills is what was coming.  I think this is the only time I have done handbrake turns from fear!  We made it.

This time it was daylight and the scenery was spectacular as we traversed the Tweed and Nightcap ranges. 

As we went along it was interesting that we passed at least 4 turn-offs marked to Nimbin.  When we go to Adelaide across the Hay Plain the same situation arises with Moulamein although it is usually 90km off the Sturt Highway rather than 13km as posted to flower-power central.  The only problem with the drive was a dweet (a different dweet, not the tractor-pilot) driving a Hyundai with Queensland plates – who did 60kph most of the time but sped up to 80 where it was possible to overtake.  I eventually got past this person and then followed one of the packs of bikers (not wearing colours) on this interesting road into Murwillumbah.

After a few misdirections in the town, we headed out to Tomewin and ascended the cliff to our friend’s place.  Hooly Dooly!  It has the most spectacular view over the Tweed Valley to Mount Warning,

is a brilliantly designed place and is generally wonderful.  I noticed some old carpet she has laid to suppress weeds and recalled our friend saying that pythons lived under there.  So I lifted the edge of the carpet to find Cane Toads!  In fact they were rather large Cane Toads!

The property is called ‘Wynne’ after the Wynne Prize for painting.  This reflects the winning painting for 1921, “Valley of the Tweed” by Elioth Gruner, being painted at a look-out across the road from the property.

After dark there was a fireworks show somewhere up the valley.  Que?  Cracker night is on the Queens Birthday long weekend, which was last weekend.  I know we are close to Queensland but I would have thought the folk would have known the date if not the time!

Eat lerp – twenty million Silvereyes can’t be wrong

Waking up to a view of Mt Warning is a very good way to start the day.  Frances commented that it could be the most photographed mountain ever.  I’m not sure about that, unless she was forecasting the number of images taken over the next week, but it is certainly one of the most spectacular views in Australia.

 I referred above, with a small amount of contempt, to us being close to Queensland.  I think that, rather than anything to do with electronics, is to blame for us getting ABC Kids programming rather than ABC News Breakfast from 6am to 9am.  Looking – very briefly - at the program on offer I could see that it had been designed to be very politically correct: about 6 kids of all sorts of races (possibly even one gringo).   A more hopeful note is that the CGI characters all floated off with big eyes and silly grins, although neither Timothy Leary nor Ken Keasey were given credit for the script!  Bleccch!

I spent some time on the deck watching Mt Warning change colour as the sun came up and noting down the few birds who either came into view or whose calls I could recognise.  There are a lot of Whipbirds in this area.

Our main aim of the day was to visit a Market or two.  The first of these was intended to be Nimbin, not because I particularly wished to go to those markets but I did feel the village had an important role in Australia society (from the Aquarius Festival) and I wanted to see what it was like now. 

As we headed off towards Murwillumbah a strange looking bird flew into a tree.  It was sufficiently odd looking for me to back up for a good look.  What an excellent  idea: this was only the second Pacific Baza I had ever seen!

Once we turned off the Kyogle road towards Nimbin the quality of road declined dramatically.  (Taking another trip down memory lane, on our previous visit to the area I attributed the state of the Kyogle road to the Shire being unwilling to put money into a road serving a bunch of goddam hippies.)  I suspect the same still applies to Blue Knob Rd, plus the boundary between Tweed and Lismore Shires is about halfway along the road so there would also be a reluctance for one Shire to do up a road to somewhere else.

We found the market which was not exactly a hive of activity. 

Frances wandered in and acquired some bromeliads while I stayed out with Tammy and acted as referee in her discussions with a large Border Collie type beast.  The funniest bit was the BC keeping trying to pat her on the head.  It didn’t know that it was likely to lose a foot if it persevered in that approach.

The village was very interesting in a strange way.  The whole place seemed to be set up as a tourist trap but there did seem to be an underlying philosophy being marketed.

 I referred above to a couple of writers who would certainly approve of the emphasis given to certain hemp products around the town.  

This topic rears its head again in about 5 days time: it may also explain why there was a 4x4 full of NSW finest wandering around the town (it is unclear whether they had come to hassle the local entrepreneurs or to get a sack of goodies for inhalatory purposes).

The message on a door about stopping coal seam gas

 was reflected in signs in a number of spots around the area opposing fracking.  (Apart from the many problems with this nasty technology which can be supported by logical facts, the observation that it was invented by Halliburton should be enough to condemn it on emotional grounds!)  Later in the week I read that 3,000 people had attended a recent Lock The Gate rally in Murrwillumbah: well done Tweed folk!

I have since come a cross a copy of the Nimbin Good Times (describing itself as the Alternative Journal of the Rainbow Region) which has a front page story about a proposed development of a Zorbing site in the village.  The proponent thereof seems to be associated with the YHA and has all sorts of “good ideas” about making the YHA independent (from what, is not specified) plus planting 500,000 trees over 150 acres (what metric system?).  It will get tourists to spend more time in the village (current visitor stay is 4 hours).  The opponent as quoted lives next door and talks about the dam into which the Zorbas get deposited having some rushes that ducks breed in and having filmed swans there.  He also mentions “commercial venture” as though it is an obscenity (probably a fair call) and talks a lot about destroying the peace and quiet.  He is probably getting into NIMBinYism – and in his circumstances so would I: ban the Zorb!

As well as all the hippie stuff Nimbin had the usual facilities of a small country town.  The work on the outside of the bowling club was rather innovative

as was the attire of the bowlers (and the rock music being played to accompany the game.

Of course with all the tokes being took around the town there was the possibility of a roach ending up in somewhere combustible so they had a Bushfire Brigade.  The signage on the outside of the shed is again innovative.

We have got a guide to birding spots in the Tweed Valley which included the Clarrie Hall Dam.  As we were passing I thought we’d drop in for a look.  The biographical material about Clarrie started off with several words about him being hard working lad on his Dad’s selection: this had me wondering why a cow cockie got a Dam named after him.  Then it emerged that he had been Shire President for some 17 years which explained everything!  There were not a great number of birds around, but we had a great walk through the forest beside the dam and spotted a Jacana trotting across the lilies on the far side of the dam.

As we headed back we found that the Uki market was still in operation.  They had a very good musical duo doing their work, which I listened to while overseeing Tammie’s interaction with a Pomeranian.  Astonishingly the Pom seemed to be faster than she was!  Frances acquired some olive products from one of the stalls.

After getting home I spent more time on the deck looking at the hordes of Silvereyes flitting through the treetops.  I have no idea how many there were but an awful lot.  I’m not even sure they were eating lerps (ie scale insects) but I did like the reference back to a famous Australian saying about blowflies.   On continuing to watch them they seemed to be eating berries (or possibly bugs that were eating the berries).

The other notable thing about the Sunday afternoon was the number of motorbikes thundering up or down Tomewin Rd.  Obviously it is seen as a challenging road to ride hard so the lads were out and getting into it on all sorts of bikes: from the exhaust notes both Harleys and Ducatis were popular.  Presumably the cops don’t fuss about this unless the death toll gets out of order.  (Another interesting memory is that this time last year we saw the same sort of behaviour on a road across the North York Moors.)